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Beyond Instinct: Embracing Human Morality
AI Suggested Keywords:
The talk addresses the philosophical dilemma concerning the human capacity to create both good and evil, highlighting the distinction between humans and animals. It explores the role of human consciousness and the six senses in the potential for moral actions, contrasting it with the instinct-driven existence of animals, which do not create intentional harm. The discussion further delves into the concept of samsara, illustrating that humans' ability to comprehend and act upon good and evil enables them to transcend instinctual responses and live harmoniously, suggesting a need to move beyond dualistic evaluations of morality.
- Samsara: Described as a state beyond human speculation, samsara symbolizes the continuous cycle of existence and suffering; it is presented as an innate aspect of life in both humans and animals, albeit experienced differently.
- Six Senses: The six senses are discussed as the faculty enabling humans to differentiate between good and evil; they account for the human potential to project, judge, and moralize, contrasting with the instinctive behavior of animals.
- Consciousness/Agency: The capacity to reflect and place oneself outside oneself is attributed to human consciousness; this capacity is linked to both creativity and the propensity for evil.
- Absolute Place: Referred to as a state beyond instinct and emotion, this place embodies peace and harmony devoid of evaluative judgments, where existence is harmonious and free from the conflicts of moral dualism.
AI Suggested Title: Beyond Instinct: Embracing Human Morality
Side: A
Speaker: Katagiri Roshi
Location: ZMC
Possible Title: Tape #2 of Lecture #6
Additional text: Only beginning of this side
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Different, yes, but the capacity that man has to get outside himself, to sit here in the zendo and to be able to put your mind up on the hill and look back at the zendo. This capacity has created incredible evil. An evil which no animal has ever been guilty of. And this for me is the problem. If we're going to say that humans are in any way better than or greater or more important than animals, I can't see this because it's only humans that create evil after evil after evil. The animal just goes along being himself all the time. Never cruel intentionally. And when you set it up like that, you say, well, here's the animal, he runs on instant, here's the man, he runs on, you know, he is more than a man, then that's value judgment, which is discrimination. I don't see it.
[01:04]
You know, the way that you can see yourself create evil, compared with you in here, in heaven, wherever. Because you have the agency of the six senses. That's why you think. That's why you think you create evil. This is something bad. No, all I'm saying, Rosha, is not that it's bad or good, but that the six senses, having the six senses, gives you the capacity, the potential, for both good and evil. That's all. It's not good, it's not evil, but you have the chance of both.
[02:09]
The animal, maybe he can't see Buddha, but he doesn't create evil either. It's actually a little horrible, isn't it? That's something, they don't create something bad or good. What you can say is, they can create just samsara. Samsara is something beyond human speculation. Of course, sometimes you can control the instinct and so on. For instance, instinct, which you want to live, right now, right here, whatever it is, whatever kind of self you have, you want to live. For instance, if the house is burning now, inside a man, there is a man who is not so strong, very weak.
[03:13]
The moment when he sees the burning house, he immediately gets very strong energies and carries a big bell, big monkey bell, carries it out. From where does the strong energy come from? You can't believe it. That's instinct. Okay? So, that is samsara. So you say, he says, I don't have strong energy to carry that big bell and monkey bell, because it's too heavy. But when the condition is different, when the condition is differently provided, he gets a strong energy that he hasn't expected before. So, that is samsara.
[04:22]
So, if you are completely... if the bird... One day... So, anyway, what you can say is, you can create samsara. This samsara is something beyond human speculation, okay? Bird, as well as bird, and animals, and livers. And then, nevertheless, what's the difference between animals and human being? There is something different. There is not evaluation. It's not evaluation to judge is you are right or wrong.
[05:35]
This bird is better than human being. The difference is... difference between the animals and birds is only human who can accept both samsara, or evil, or good, and bad, completely in accord. And he can improve, can live in peace, without fighting. Before you attach to your emotion, this is great capability which man has. This is the senses. According to the... merely according to the sixth senses, there is some conceptual evaluation of bird is good, or human being is bad, and so on.
[06:53]
I don't think so. You have to transcend more than that, okay? Something more than that. Something evaluation which you have thought, this is good, and this is bad. In other words, beyond the impassive instinct, beyond impassive sixth senses, where is it? That's the place, it's called absolute place, where everything exists in peace, harmony, without fighting with each other, without having to decode instinct, emotion. Evaluation.
[07:51]
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